Archive | August, 2013

Growing up in Garden Grove – Our Neighborhood

15 Aug

When we came to California in 1963 my folks bought a 3 bedroom 2.5 bath house in Garden Grove. It was way better than any of the apartments that we lived in in Michigan or Washington, although it wasn’t nearly as cool as Grandpa and Grandma Logsdon’s home in Flint, MI.

When we moved in, it was a brand new house in a new neighborhood at the corner of Harbor Blvd and Garden Grove Blvd. The house backed up onto a big empty strip of land, we could see houses and business across the way but had no idea that within the next few years there would be a Freeway in our backyard. It turned out that it was the future home of the 22 Freeway.  Now we thought it was pretty cool when they were putting the freeway in. I will admit the coolness factor dropped drastically when the cars took over. But fortunately they eventually came through and planted trees in our backyard to act as a sound barrier.

The house was located on Pearce Ave. which had empty fields at each end,  This turned out to be the best thing ever as it was really awkward for cars to turn around so we ended up with very little traffic. This meant we could spend all our time in the street playing football, over the line, war, bicycle and skateboard riding and dang near anything else 3 young boys could think of. And with streetlights it was easy to figure out when the play day was over. With a little effort we built an underground fort, I think it lasted all of 2 weeks before the city came in and bulldozed it full.

This house was also within walking distance of our elementary school (Eisenhower Elementary about 3/4 mile walk), our middle school (Leroy H. Doig, about 1.2 miles), and our high school (Santiago High, about 1 mile) . This was nice because our mom almost never had to drive us, except when it was really rainy.

This neighborhood turned out to be perfect, at least to me. We had a Jack-in-the-Box(late night Jumbo Jacks with mom and dad) and Del Taco (Taco Tuesday 10 Tacos for a $1) just around the corner, an Alpha Beta Grocery store (by then I had grown out of my shoplifting ways) just a short walk down the street and when I got older it had my kind of candy store – Sav-On Electronics, I could build anything I wanted perfect.

I lived there for 15 years and kept going back until 1989 and every one of them was filled with many wonderful memories.

Living the Alaskan Dream – Nightmare on Elm Street Style

12 Aug

 

Well after a week in Alaska for work it was time to head home. The plan was to leave work on Friday at 10:30 am Alaskan Time and drive through the countryside during the next 15 hours before Dawn, a member of my team, and I caught our flight home at 1:30 AM. We were ready to see the natural majesty and wildlife of Alaska. The vistas were incredible, a normal photograph couldn’t do it justice so I ended up taking nothing but panoramas. And while the vistas were magnificent, the wildlife didn’t come through. Or more accurately the large wildlife failed to materialize. Awesome plan, went like clockwork for the first 10 hours. Leaving the base we headed south along the Richardson Highway, and through the Alaskan Mountain Range.

 

We turned right at the Denali Highway and head across the state heading towards Denali National Park. It was 133 miles of road, which doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that most of it is unpaved. Now before we started this adventure I heard from several of the local people that 20 miles of it was paved on both sides which left only 93 miles of gravel. Not a problem. Also one of my coworkers suggested that we take his home phone number so that we could call him if we had car trouble during the gravel road trip. Now we thought that was awfully cool and nice of him. Little did we know…

 

It was during this drive we learned a very unnerving fact. Alaskans lie to us Southerners and let’s face it to Alaskans we are all Southerners. It turns out that the Denali Highway is 20 miles paved on the Eastern side and only 2 miles on the Western side. Which left me with 111 miles of gravel and when you are looking forward to getting off the gravel those extra 18 miles can take forever. I guess we should have figured it out ahead of time, when we were checking the map and noticed that the town of Cantwell was at the western end of the Denali Highway. Problem was we didn’t know that on the map that Cantwell stood for can’t well tell them Southerners the truth….

 

But meanwhile back at the drive. The Denali Highway is worth the time in the summer. The views were amazing and you can see a glacier at the distance. It’s Amazing.  There is very little traffic on that Highway and some of it isn’t too bright. Like the guy pulling a camping trailer with a shredded tire. A gas station with some services was 5 miles behind him but instead he continued going forward at about 25 miles an hour to the next services which was a hundred miles away. Or the guy with the camper who for about 10 miles didn’t bother to pull over and let the string of cars behind him pass. Or that you need to watch your step for behind every tree and bush you could be stepping into some ones toilet and from my brief experience many people did.

 

Now as to the wildlife, we saw a baby and mama moose on the base, so we figured our chances of seeing more moose or elk was pretty good when we were off the main roads. Turns out not to be the case, we drove about 300miles and the only wildlife we saw were mosquitos. Should you make the mistake and pull off at the wrong spot, you will be surrounded by those little buggers in a heartbeat. When this happened to us I fortunately had brought along some mosquito bait. So I was able to walk out a bit to try and take a great  picture, unfortunately it was at that moment my bait failed me, Dawn jumped back in the car to get away from them. So the second she climbed in the car I swear I heard NEXT, and they attacked me in mass. Before I knew it I was running for the car, without my super photo, swatting like a crazy man.  When I made it to the car, I hopped in, started the engine, rolled down all the windows, and in about 5 seconds I was doing 60 on the gravel road, praying that the hitchhikers would be sucked out of the car and we would be left in peace. No luck, we ended up having to hunt down about a dozen of them on our own. Needless to say, we stopped pulling off the road at that point and declared enough! So we didn’t stop again until we bought gas in Cantwell.

 

Needless to say from now on I am bringing mosquito repellent (or Dawn) with me from now on in the summer months. So from Cantwell we went to Denali National Park and managed to get there just before the park office closed, which we didn’t go into instead we went on a 3 mile hike back into the woods and if you like trees and rivers, this is definitely the spot. We never found  spot to see Mt McKinley and discovered only after we left that when we hit Cantwell we should have turned left to go to a viewing location. Oh well, next time. The Hike was at least fun, except for the last little bit that felt like it was straight up.

 

From Denali we drove back to Fairbanks where we filled the car and decided we were done so we headed for the airport where we checked in, made it through security and at 8:00 PM we waited for our 1:30 am flight. So after a little drinking even less eating and a lot of waiting it was time to board the plane. And this was when Freddy Krueger joined the party.

 

So we are all loaded everyone is ready to go and then the pilot comes on and tells us that the center tank fuel pumps aren’t working so it will be a bit while they investigate. It’s at this point I take my short nap, me thinking a quick 30 minute nap will set me up for a nice for the rest of the trip home. So 90 .to worry we are poaching the 6:00 am flights plane. Cool at least we will be getting out of here. So after we all trudge off the plane and start to stand in line to get ourselves rebooked the pilot comes on and says “oh by the way, this crew is at the end of their light window and they can’t get us to Seattle so we will be stopping in Anchorage for a crew change, but don’t worry it won’t be long. We will get off and they will get right on and then you will be back in the air on your way to Seattle”

 

Okay this kind of stuff happens. And then I notice the board it says we will land in Anchorage a little at 5:50 am and we will land in Seattle at 10:10 am. Wait a minute, 4:00 am Alaskan time until 10:10 Pacific Time is 7 hours and Seattle is about 4 hours from Fairbanks. So what are we doing with all the extra time? WE are sitting on the ground in Anchorage!! Our short 30 – 40 minute sounding layover is actually 2 hours!! But then Alaska Airlines steps up and saves the day, they hand all of us passengers these sweet little postcards that say, “Gee we are sorry about really screwing up your trip, and we feel really, really bad about it, so here if you join our rewards program, we will give a free 2000 miles.”

 

So we are waiting in line for like 40 minutes waiting to get reticketed when they start boarding the plane.  So 10 minutes later everyone that has been reticketed or just going to Seattle is on the plane and the hostess goes on the PA and tells all us folks who are still in line to get on the plane now so they can leave. Second time she tells us that she adds “you are all being reticketed already in Seattle so we don’t need to wait in line. What!! Are you freaking kidding me!! Where was this little message 50 minutes ago! So now we are back on the plane and heading to Anchorage and the crew comes through with a better offer instead of 2000 miles we will give you a voucher, of unspecified amount, for use on a later flight or more miles. I took the voucher.

 

So after a wonderful layover in Anchorage, stuck in the plane, we get to Seattle and we are off to get our new tickets for the balance of the trip. So the agent calls us up and tells us great news we have you on flights through Portland that get you back to Santa Barbara, the only slight glitch is the little 5 hour layover in Seattle you will have to endure. CRAP. After lots of struggling we end up with no other options so we begin our day in SeaTac, which will always be remembered for some of the most gawd awful on the planet. Instead of Salsa they used barbecue sauce. I couldn’t finish em, guess they were at least good for my diet, quantity wise. So after doing our best Eric Snowden imitation, we managed to get on our flight to Portland where we endured a reasonable layover before our final flight.

 

Interesting thing about Portland; outside of its large number of Strip Clubs, this was not personal experience but a Mark and Brian radio fact, was a sign that told you that in Portland there were possibilities in every direction. Seems pretty optimistic, until you realize that they put it on a do not enter sign…

 

So the last bit of fun we had is that we were originally going to land in Santa Barbara at around 1:00 PM and we were going to pick up a rental car from Avis. So like a good customer I called the Avis desk at Santa Barbara airport to let them know that we were going to be in after 10:00 pm and could they be sure we still had a car. Unfortunately I ended up with the automated message that told me the agent was serving other customers where I was transferred to the Customer Service Center, who told us to contact the counter at the airport. So after our 13th attempt and getting the exact same message each and every time, I finally made the customer service center take my information and update my reservation information with my current flight number, and the said we should still contact the Airport Avis counter. So 12 calls later we talk to customer service again and they look at my updated record and discover that nothing has been updated and it still had all the old flight information. Needless to say I was not a happy camper. So they updated it again and because Dawn and I had such faith in the Avis system, she talked with her husband and made arrangements for him to meet us at the airport, just in case.

 

Fortunately we landed in Santa Barbara, 25 hours after our flight was scheduled to start, and the agent was still there and I picked up a car to get me home. So while Dawn is a wonderful travelling companion, being funny, articulate and easy to get along with. I think I can do without the 25 hour flights so from here on out she is on her own and if I find we are on the same flights to the same destination again, I am getting off and taking the train…..